


Y si pierdes mis huellas

by a_classic_fool



Series: On A Seven-Forty-Seven Boardin' JFK (Nina Verse) [1]
Category: Do No Harm (TV), In the Heights - Miranda
Genre: Existential Crisis, Let Ruben Be Happy, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11019519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_classic_fool/pseuds/a_classic_fool
Summary: Nina, back in New York before her senior year at Stanford and uncertain about the future, goes looking for Usnavi and finds Ruben instead. Misunderstandings and feelings ensue.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Basically, I really love Nina and I also really love Usnavi/Vanessa/Ruben, and this is the result. This story is set the summer after Nina’s junior year at Stanford, after Usnavi and Vanessa have been dating Ruben for a few months. They’re all in their twenties. I don't remember the musical ever specifying what Nina was studying, so I’m imagining it as Honors Comparative Literature, which requires a senior thesis, among other things. Ruben actually gets to be fairly happy in this story, so no major warnings, but I will update warnings and ratings as I go if need be.
> 
> Again, based on @thisstableground's [less than ninety degrees](http://archiveofourown.org/series/713601) 'verse.

Every time Nina Rosario returned to New York in the summer, she found herself startled by the woolen feeling of the air as it settled onto her skin and stayed there. Time spent outside dragged on in a thick, sticky sort of way and each day dawned and died with the same unrelenting heat. California, hot though it was, was not the same. 

This particular summer was not one she was looking forward to. She had a year left at Stanford and after that her life seemed to yawn in front of her, dark and inscrutable. Her senior thesis loomed too, demanding her attention and her time and her perfection, and when her friends from California texted her pictures of themselves in libraries and laboratories, with expressions of mock agony and captions like _“Finally starting this fucking thing, can’t wait till it’s fucking done,”_ her stomach flipped. She could picture herself handing in a thesis, could picture herself putting on a cap and gown and turning the tassel in the dry thin air and then — what? She had no idea. She had no safety net. This was the end of what she’d always known she wanted to do.

Nina had told her parents not to pick her up at the airport and she was grateful for that decision as she sat in a seat on the A train with her suitcase between her legs and her book bag on her lap, the rest of her belongings in a storage locker in Palo Alto. She picked at a tiny hole in the knee of her jeans and thought about the months that had passed since she’d last been home, hoped alternately that nothing had changed and that everything had. Once most of her fellow passengers had got off the train, she tried speaking Spanish to herself, under her breath, and listened for the slang she’d picked up from Mexican friends, from the hole-in-the-wall taquerias where she’d learned to go when she wanted just to hear Spanish spoken by people who knew it. Just to hear the sound of the words. 

When the train shuddered to a stop at 181st Street, Nina followed an old man and a couple in their thirties onto the platform. She knew none of them and, as she pointed herself towards her block, imagined it flooded with strangers. Rich people looking for an authentic experience, tech workers looking for cheap apartments, families looking for houses near a park — none of it safe, or home. It hurt a fundamental place inside her. 

Eventually, drenched in sweat that wouldn’t evaporate and flushed from the late morning sun, Nina found herself outside the bodega, which looked much the same as ever, if dustier and a bit more careworn. Wheeling her suitcase behind her, she pushed the door open and stepped inside. Her nose was immediately flooded with the smell of coffee, the citrusy tang of cleaning products, and the warm mustiness of old wood. A dark-haired man stood behind the counter, head bowed.

“Usnavi!” said Nina. Her heart hurt, suddenly, with how badly she wanted to be home. _I am home_ , she told herself, but her body didn’t believe her — she wanted Usnavi to hug her and let her rest her head on his shoulder and remind her that she belonged somewhere. No matter how long she lived in California, she would never get used to the feeling of not having friends who entirely understood her and the place from which she had come.

But the man who looked up at the sound of the bell over the door wasn’t Usnavi, although they looked startlingly similar. His face was rounder, his eyes softer and sadder, his hair longer and shaggy. He was wearing a sweater, he wasn’t wearing a hat, and his body seemed capable of stillness; where Usnavi was thin and bony and full of frantic energy, this man was more solid, a bit stockier, gentler around the edges. He had been chewing on the end of a pencil and he stopped, set the pencil on top of the open notebook in front of him. Nina watched the familiar way that his eyes seemed to take a moment to refocus as he shifted them from the notebook to her face — it was the same refocusing her own eyes did when she was interrupted while studying. 

“I get that a lot,” he said, the smallest of smiles pulling at one side of his mouth. “Usnavi should be back soon. He had to run an errand, I’m just filling in.” 

Nina, realizing she was still blocking the doorway, made her way to the counter where Not Usnavi was standing. She extricated a hand from the pocket of her jeans and held it out. 

He shook it hesitantly, pulling the sleeve of his sweater down a little further before he did so. “Ruben,” he said, looking her in the eye with a mix of hesitancy and self-consciousness.

“Nina,” she said. He dropped her gaze and pulled his hand away as soon as she relaxed her grip. “You don’t know how to make his coffee, do you?”

His face loosened and the small smile returned. “I wish,” he said. “I can make you chemically flawless coffee but it still won’t be as good as his.” 

“Are you a chemist?” 

Ruben’s shoulders rose almost imperceptibly towards his ears. “No, not really. I teach basic chemistry, that’s all.” 

“Got it,” said Nina, into the stiff pause that followed his response. The silence stretched on as she leaned her hip against the counter and shoved her hands back into her pockets. Eventually, in an attempt to put Ruben more at ease, she asked, “How do you know Usnavi? He must really like you, to leave the bodega with you.”

“I used to live in Philly,” said Ruben. “I kind of just — ran into him when I moved here. Best coffee. Like I said.”

Nina smiled. “Light and sweet,” she said, with a nostalgic half-smile. 

“I’m more of a bitter-as-I-can-get-him-to-make-it kind of guy myself,” said Ruben, picking his pencil back up and spinning it around in his fingers. “A latte is about as sweet as I’ll go. Sometimes in the morning he’ll give it to me black, if he’s tired enough.”

“Man, that’s dedication, getting here right when this place opens,” said Nina. “You gotta beat the pre-work rush.”

Ruben, still playing with the pencil, was finally making easy eye contact with her when he said, “Oh, God no, I work at a community college. I basically never leave the house that early. I mean at the apartment.” 

Something needled at the back of Nina’s brain. “Your apartment?”

Ruben, who was now drawing odd geometric shapes in his open notebook without appearing to realize he was doing so, looked puzzled. “Well, yeah. I don’t live here.”

Nina opened her mouth and closed it again. Ruben seemed to realize what he’d said and he flushed, looked down at his notebook, and began erasing something he’d drawn with great purpose. Before either of them could say anything else, the bell over the door rang and Nina turned to see Usnavi — actually Usnavi this time, she was sure — walk in, his cap at a slight angle and his arms filled with brown paper bags. When he noticed her, still leaning against the counter, he nearly dropped them all on the floor. 

“Nina!” He covered the distance between them in two steps and wrapped her in his arms and it was such a good hug that her mind cleared for a moment, her muscles relaxed, everything became as simple and reliable as the smell of the bodega, the blue of the sky, the haze that clung to the GWB in the mornings. 

They stood hugging for a long time before Usnavi stepped back and looked her up and down with a kind of warm appraisal that reminded her of Abuela Claudia, in the years Abuela had been alive. “You look good,” Usnavi pronounced. 

“So do you,” said Nina, truthfully. Usnavi’s shoulders, as always, were slightly hunched with exhaustion, and the skin underneath his eyes was smudged purple, but he looked happy. His eyes themselves were bright and clear. 

Usnavi picked up the paper bags he’d deposited unceremoniously on the floor and set them back down behind the counter. He put his arm around Ruben’s shoulders in the kind of way that Nina would typically interpret as brotherly and said, “Have you met Ruben, Nina?”

“Briefly,” she answered, smiling tentatively at Ruben, trying to gauge where they stood after the odd way their conversation had ended. “I thought he was you.”

“I swear I don’t _see_ it,” said Usnavi, laughing. “Coffee? It’s on the house.” Ruben made as if to slip out behind Usnavi when Usnavi brushed Ruben’s wrist with his fingers and said, “For both of you.”

After Nina had finished her coffee and promised to meet Usnavi later that evening, once he’d got done with work, she left the bodega and stopped on the sidewalk, out of the way of the door. She sat down on top of her suitcase and stared up at the sky, eyes closed, for a long moment before realizing that she could, in fact, still see through the weathered glass of the bodega’s front windows. 

From this vantage point, and with no small amount of guilt, she watched Usnavi move to stand very close to Ruben, his hand drifting to Ruben’s waist as though to pull Ruben flush against his body. They were talking quietly to one another, too soft for Nina to hear from outside, but Usnavi was blushing and not taking his eyes off Ruben’s face and Ruben kept lowering his gaze and looking up at Usnavi through his eyelashes. When their conversation was over, Usnavi pressed a kiss to Ruben’s cheek, dangerously close to the corner of his mouth, before Ruben slipped out from behind the counter and disappeared upstairs into Usnavi’s apartment. 

_What the fuck,_ thought Nina, _am I supposed to do with this information?_ She tried thinking back, tried to remember if Usnavi had ever talked about another man in a way that seemed more than friendly, but Nina could barely remember a time when Usnavi hadn’t been agonizingly in love with Vanessa. 

And _Vanessa_. Nina imagined Vanessa finding out, thought about the way Vanessa’s hair would crackle from roots to ends and about the way her face would twist and tighten to keep the pain from showing. Imagined Vanessa saying, _Nah, I don’t care_ , while caring an unbearable amount. Nina knew that the armor of Vanessa’s anger, usually so firmly in place, slipped sometimes, and Nina hated seeing the raw, shattered places beneath it. 

Eventually, after several perplexed glances from passers-by, Nina realized how odd she must look, sitting outside the bodega and trying not to be noticed. She got off her suitcase, adjusted her book bag, and walked slowly away, concentrating on stepping between the cracks in the sidewalk for something to do with her mind. 

The weight of the work she had to do, of the things she had not figured out and the books hanging heavy as bricks over her shoulder, suddenly felt unmanageable. She looked back at the bodega as she walked, almost colliding with a streetlight, and her stomach contorted with a queasy combination of anger and grief. The bodega, Usnavi and Vanessa, the urgent, daily rhythms of this block and this barrio — these were sacred things, and now they seemed as unpredictable as a flipped coin in the instant before it landed. 

_Tomorrow,_ she told herself. _Tomorrow. You’ll figure it out tomorrow._ It sounded less than reassuring, even in her head, and she aimed herself homewards, trying not to think about the enormous uncertainty that seemed to be getting closer with every step she took.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Minor warnings for moderate angst of the existential variety. Also, to the best of my understanding, “la cerebrito” can be used to mean “brainy one” or “smart one” and if it’s referring to a woman it’s used with “la,” even though “cerebrito” is masculine. If I’m wrong, anyone who speaks Spanish better than I do (so, basically, everyone who speaks Spanish at all) is more than welcome to correct me! (It’s always cool to correct my Spanish, my New York geography, etc.)

_Usnavi, 4:04 pm_  
still on for tonight?

 _Nina, 4:05 pm_  
Yes. Where? When?

 _Usnavi, 4:07pm_  
park! picnic!

 _Nina, 4:07 pm_  
Bugs? Heat?

 _Usnavi, 4:08 pm_  
you’re no fun anymore. what did california do to you?? :(

 _Nina, 4:09 pm_  
Haha, the park is fine. What time?

 _Usnavi, 4:10 pm_  
it okay if V comes? she wants to see youuu, I told her you were home!

 _Usnavi, 4:15 pm_  
ninaaaaaaa

 _Usnavi, 4:18pm_  
nina text me back i’m stressing out over here

 _Nina, 4:20 pm_  
Yeah. Of course. 

_Usnavi, 4:20 pm_  
good!!!!!! 

_Nina, 4:21 pm_  
Usnavi. Time. 

_Nina, 4:25 pm_  
Usnavi!! What time!?

 _Usnavi, 4:26 pm_  
oh. yeah. sorry! got distracted. 6:30.

***

Nina got to the park early. She had spent the entire afternoon sitting in front of the fan and staring at a blank piece of paper that said nothing, so far, but “Outline,” in her neatest, most purposeful handwriting, and eventually her patience with herself had snapped. After throwing the paper, her book, and her pencil across the room, picking them up again, and erasing the pencil mark from the wall, she’d given up entirely. Even though it was still blazing hot outside, at least it was a change of scenery. 

Vanessa was already lying on a blanket in the grass, her long legs stretched out in front of her and her hands folded behind her head. Her eyes were shut and the trees cast mottled evening shadows across her eyelids. 

“Vanessa,” called Nina, from several feet away. Vanessa sat up immediately, blinking against the light, and patted the ground beside her. 

“ _La cerebrito_! You’re back!” 

Nina covered the distance between them in a few steps, dropped her bag on the ground, and sat down next to Vanessa. Without saying anything, she tipped her head sideways to rest on Vanessa’s shoulder. Vanessa smelled like sun and shampoo and her hair was warm; strands of it caught in the wind and blew back into Nina’s face, but Nina couldn’t find it in herself to care very much. 

“Hey _linda_ ,” said Vanessa, more quietly this time. She let her fingers tangle with Nina’s on the ground between them. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” said Nina. “Tired.”

“I get that.” 

Nina expected to feel the familiar pressure to speak that had become so much a part of her life in seminars, in lecture halls, in rooms full of people who expected something from her, but she didn’t. Vanessa demanded nothing from Nina and, in return, gave Nina only what she was willing to give. It was a good arrangement. 

They sat that way, holding hands and leaning on one another, until Nina finally asked what she’d known she would eventually end up asking. “Have you heard from Benny?”

Nina felt Vanessa’s shoulder shift. “You really don’t talk anymore, do you?”

“No. Not since — well. That fight was ugly. And I didn’t have anything to say to him before that anyway, really. We just, I don’t know. Forgot how to connect, I guess.”

Vanessa kept her gaze steady on the skyline. “He’s okay. I don’t see him a lot either, these days. I think he’s moving to DC soon.”

“Usnavi still see him?”

“Yeah. But I’m only here when I’m staying at Usnavi’s, and Usnavi kinda — keeps us separate.” 

Nina tried to nod but her temple ground uncomfortably against the bones of Vanessa’s shoulder. Instead, she lifted her head and turned to look at Vanessa properly. Vanessa’s eyes flickered back and forth from Nina’s face to the ground and she crossed and uncrossed her bare ankles, wiggling her toes in the grass. 

The first few semesters at Stanford, Nina had texted Vanessa and Usnavi with obsessive frequency. She’d written them letters when she had long weekends, gone for walks on lonely Friday evenings to take photos of everything that reminded her of home, tried to pester Usnavi to get an email address before remembering, too late, that the barrio had deeply unreliable internet. 

And for years, she’d been unsure if she hoped that they were perfectly happy when she was away or if she hoped that they missed her as much as she missed them. If she thought those two things could coexist. She’d taken to imagining that a hazy outline of herself accompanied them as they went about their days, rode with them on trains and stood shoulder to shoulder with them while they cooked dinner, in the same way that their own hazy outlines were with her always. But as month after month passed, conversations with her imagined Usnavi and her imagined Vanessa had started to catch in her throat. _I have so many papers to write, I’ve only gotten 2,000 words done. I learned to drive stick, did you know? The traffic is so bad here, 101 backs up so early. Last weekend I pretended to be sick because I didn’t have money for a restaurant._ A million details as unfamiliar to them as the toll of the Stanford bell tower, the red tiled roofs, the way the sandstone and stucco of the walls glowed and glimmered in the sun. The heave and gasp of California as it cracked under the weight of the drought. 

Eventually, Nina said, “Do you think maybe — Benny thought I thought I was too good for him? And that’s why he got so mad?” 

Vanessa chewed a hangnail. “Why would you think that?”

“Don’t you think that? I mean, about me? Don’t you think I think I’m too good for you, sometimes?” 

“No, I don’t. I’m, y’know. Proud of you. We’re all proud of you.” Vanessa paused and resumed chewing the hangnail. She looked as though she were considering adding more. 

“I mean, it’s hard sometimes,” Vanessa said finally. She spoke quickly, as though she’d been saving her words for days. Maybe for years. “Your life is so different, when you’re there, I don’t even know how to picture you. I don’t know what it looks like, or what you do all day, or what you talk about, or who your friends are.” 

Nina opened her mouth to defend herself but Vanessa shook her head and kept talking. “No, I know, you tell me things and you send pictures and stuff. But it’s not the same. And you made it out of here, and you _deserve_ it, I’m not saying you don’t, but I don’t know if I’ll ever make it out of this city and you — I don’t know if you’ll ever come back.” Vanessa let out an enormous breath and her chest seemed to go concave for a moment with relief. She was still looking anywhere but at Nina.

Nina thought she might cry. Her eyes burned and her throat hurt with trying to sound calm. 

“I don’t know if I’ll come back either, after I graduate,” she said finally. 

For a second, Nina thought she saw Vanessa wipe her cheek, but Vanessa’s voice stayed level.

“I know. I mean, it’s fine. I get it,” Vanessa said. Nina knew she was trying very hard to sound like it mattered less than it did. 

Without warning, Vanessa shifted until she was sitting cross-legged and looking directly at Nina. “But there’s something — something I wanted to tell you, I guess. And you’re gonna think it’s weird. But, like, it’s good. And it helps, when you’re gone, and now that everything’s changing, and — ”

“I brought beer!” said a voice from behind them, and they turned to see Usnavi, shopping bag in one hand and six pack in the other, walking towards them with a wide smile. His shirt was mostly unbuttoned and flapping open, catching in the breeze and nearly sliding off his shoulders.

Usnavi had brought, in addition to beer, a generous supply of the bodega’s daily leftovers and they gorged themselves for a while without saying much of anything. Occasionally Usnavi would wrap a strand of Vanessa’s hair around his finger or rest his hand on Nina’s shoulder for a moment as he ate, but the rhythm of passing food and drink between one another did not necessitate speech. 

As one beer turned into two turned into two and a half, Nina watched Usnavi for guilt and Vanessa for signs that she knew what Usnavi was doing, but nothing seemed different, or wrong. Usnavi was as tender and adoring as always, as delightedly incredulous that Vanessa was with him as he’d been since they started dating. Vanessa, as was her way, swatted at Usnavi’s chest when he rested his hand on her thigh and rolled her eyes when his lips found her neck while leaning behind her for a napkin, but Nina could see a part of her that so often stayed hidden unfurl in the warmth of Usnavi’s attention. Vanessa did not need anyone to tell her she was beautiful, or fierce, or worthwhile — Vanessa had always been the one who saw trains as opportunities and roads as invitations. But Usnavi loved her without expectation or selfishness, and she opened to him in a way she opened to no one else. Nina pressed her hand over her heart, hoping the pressure would stop it from hurting.

***

Eventually, after the sun had begun to set and Vanessa had resorted to tying the stems of the cherries Usnavi was feeding her into knots with her tongue and spitting them back at him, they packed up the remains of their dinner and Usnavi draped the picnic blanket around his shoulders like a cape. He wrapped one arm around Vanessa’s waist and the other around Nina’s and they set off, ungainly and awkward, back towards the bodega. 

“You staying here tonight?” he asked Vanessa.

She rolled her eyes at him. “Obviously.”

He grinned. “I gotta grab some stuff from the store, but do you wanna come upstairs and hang out, Nina? I think I have ice cream in the freezer.”

Nina nodded, smiling, and Usnavi extricated himself from between her and Vanessa and slipped into the bodega, holding up a finger to indicate that he’d just be a minute. In the semi-darkness, it seemed to Nina that he was aging too fast. The angles of his face and shoulders, which had always been a marker of his scrappiness, his youth, his perpetual energy, were thrown into odd relief by the pale glow of the streetlamp outside and he looked gaunt and tired. Nina thought about Ruben, and about how much softer he’d looked, and about how Usnavi had lit up around him in the same way he lit up around Vanessa. It made sense, she supposed, that Vanessa could not compensate by herself for the way Usnavi worked himself down and wore himself out. Maybe Usnavi needed someone else to help lighten the load.

“Hey,” said Nina, as she and Vanessa both watched Usnavi rummaging around under the counter of the bodega. “Have you met Ruben?”

“Course,” said Vanessa. “Have you?” 

“This morning. I thought he was Usnavi.”

“Right?” said Vanessa. “They look fucking _identical_. And they’re both convinced that they don’t.” 

“No, they totally do. You’re right.” 

Vanessa took a breath and said, in such a casual tone that it was obviously not a casual question, “Did Usnavi turn up eventually? Like, did you see them together?”

Nina nodded. 

“So you know, then?” asked Vanessa, in a way that suggested she was relieved not to need to explain. 

“Know what?” said Nina. She was beginning to wonder if she did not, in fact, know what she thought she knew. 

But before Vanessa could answer, Usnavi poked his head back out the door. “All done! Come on up.”

They followed Usnavi upstairs and Vanessa immediately flopped onto the couch, kicking her sandals off and sighing dramatically. Usnavi’s apartment was clean and tidy but falling apart at the edges — the wooden floor creaked and threw out splinters every few feet, the windows were filmy and crooked, the kitchen tile was cracked and blackened where it met the cabinets. 

“You’re telling me,” said Usnavi, smiling in the direction of Vanessa’s sigh and sitting down at the kitchen table. 

“Want me to get the ice cream?” asked Nina, moving towards the kitchen. 

“No, no, you’re my guest!” Usnavi started to get up, pushing himself off the chair with his hands, but Nina shook her head. 

“I got it,” she said. 

Usnavi sank back down and looked relieved in spite of himself. Nina felt suddenly and overwhelmingly guilty for how tired she was all the time, for resenting her thesis, for the way she still hated Stanford sometimes. How could she justify her exhaustion, looking at Usnavi? She was not racing against time. Her body was not the last defense against an encroaching world. 

As Nina dug around in the freezer and let the icy air cool her face, she heard the bedroom door open on the other side of the apartment. Turning around in surprise, she saw both Usnavi and Vanessa staring at Ruben, who was emerging from the bedroom in a pair of red plaid pajama pants and a tank top, both of which were clearly Usnavi’s and clearly too small. The pajama pants sat very low on his hips and the ribbing of the tank top was stretched across his chest.

“Heard you get home,” he said, sleepily, rubbing his eyes and apparently not noticing Nina in the kitchen. “Let myself in earlier. Borrowed your clothes, sorry.”

“Ruben,” said Usnavi, his eyes flitting back and forth from Nina to Ruben. “Maybe now’s not — ”

But Ruben, eyes still half closed, went up to Vanessa, who had stood up and who was closer. He slid his arms around her waist and buried his face in her neck. “Hi,” he said. 

She gave Usnavi the kind of pained look that clearly said _Well, could you say no?_ and wrapped her arms around Ruben in return, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. She whispered something to him in Spanish that sounded like _Nina esta aqui_ and even though everyone in the room could understand, it felt, to Nina, like a private language that she had never learned. 

Ruben pulled away from Vanessa and looked at Nina with wide eyes. Nina thought that it must feel like a violation, to know that a moment of such privacy had been so unexpectedly shared, and her suspicion was confirmed when Ruben’s whole body seemed to fold minutely inwards on itself. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”

Still heavy with sleep, he turned and retreated back to the bedroom, not making eye contact with anyone. Vanessa’s hand hung uselessly in the air where his arm had been moments before and Usnavi still hadn’t gotten up from the table. 

“Well,” said Vanessa eventually, “that wasn’t quite how we pictured that going.”

“I should go,” said Nina, into the silence. 

Usnavi pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “You just got here.” But it was without conviction and Nina collected her bag from the kitchen counter anyway, wrongfooted and uncomfortable. As the apartment door swung shut behind her, she heard hurried footsteps and the sound of the bedroom door reopening. Heard their three voices, low and intimate, rise and fall in an odd harmony with one another. 

Was she jealous? No, she decided, she wasn’t. Vanessa and Usnavi were two of her favorite people on earth, but she much preferred that everyone keep all their clothes on. And she had never minded spending time with them while they were being affectionate — if anything, their affection was comforting. It felt like home in a way that Benny, as much as she’d loved him, never quite had. 

Realizing she’d walked nearly a block already without noticing, she stopped and looked around. The bodega, with its familiar sign, was still there, but an overpriced clothing boutique had replaced the salon and a poster in the window of what had once been the dispatch proclaimed the upcoming arrival of a farm-to-table Latin-fusion brunch spot. She tried to remember if the clothing boutique had been there the last time she’d been home and found that she couldn’t. She had no idea.

In the back of her mind, she’d always pictured this block as a kind of fortress, stubbornly refusing to change despite the whirl of the world around it. She’d thought that she could leave for months at a time and return to find everything exactly as she’d left it, the spaces she’d made for herself still waiting for her to occupy them again. She knew now, with a wrenching certainty, that she’d been wrong.

Later, long past midnight, as she rolled from left side to right side and back again under the thinnest sheet known to man, she found herself unable to stop thinking about the summer she’d dropped out of college. She’d slept with Benny that summer, on this bed and under this sheet, with the same fan aimed at their tangled bodies. She remembered so vividly how his face had looked that first morning, the lines of the pillowcase imprinted on his cheek, and she remembered just as vividly how her father’s face had looked when he’d told Benny to leave. Was that how her own face had looked, staring at Ruben across Usnavi’s kitchen? In that moment, she’d seen Ruben as an outsider and, if she was being truthful, she knew that a part of her treacherous heart had wanted to kick him out.

***

 _Usnavi, 1:35 am_  
nina, i should’ve told you earlier, i didn’t know you’d already met ruben, i’m sorry!

 _Usnavi, 1:41 am_  
nina, you’re probably not awake at this point, but if you are, text me back. i’m definitely stressing.

 _Usnavi, 1:43 am_  
okay, one more. did we make you feel like you didn’t matter? we didn’t mean to. it was just a lot to dump on you right away, you know?

 _Usnavi, 1:47 am_  
i lied. nina. ninaninanina. call me in the morning. or come to the bodega. or something.

 _Nina, 1:55 am_  
I’m awake. It’s okay. We’ll talk later. I’m really tired.

 _Usnavi, 1:56 am_  
okay…

***

 _Usnavi, 2:01 am_  
V i’m freaking out

 _Vanessa, 2:02 am_  
babe you’re in the same bed as me rn

 _Usnavi, 2:02 am_  
i know but i don’t wanna wake ruben up

 _Vanessa, 2:03 am_  
do you need help going to sleep?

 _Usnavi, 2:03 am_  
...do i?

 _Vanessa, 2:03 am_  
i think you do

 _Vanessa, 2:03 am_  
why don’t you wake ruben up after all

 _Vanessa, 2:04 am_  
tell him your pants look cute on him

 _Vanessa, 2:04 am_  
but they’ll look cuter on the floor


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Warnings for vague discussion of past abuse. Also, in this story, Usnavi and Vanessa have only been dating Ruben for a couple of months and do not yet know everything that happened to Ruben regarding Ian/Jason. I have ideas for playing with this in a different story but for now, they just know the basics (that Ruben was kidnapped, taken to Jamaica, tortured, and assaulted).

The following morning, Nina sat on a bench in the park, surrounded by a pile of books. Some of them were leftovers from her Literature of the Americas class the previous semester and she flipped through the one closest to her, watching her past self’s highlighting get steadily untidier as the page numbers increased. Of all the classes in the entire department, she’d only found one whose syllabus included authors from Latin America. Comparative Literature, as long as everyone was from well north of the equator. 

Nina had not, as she had meant to, texted Usnavi. She kept picking up her phone, writing a rambling sentence, and deleting it immediately. She did not know how to properly discuss the social ramifications of running away from your childhood best friend’s apartment after accidentally encountering unexpected polyamory. 

_Hey, sorry I ran out last night, I was surprised you weren’t cheating on Vanessa?_

_Hey, sorry I ran out last night, but are you sure you aren’t replacing me and deciding that you no longer care about me?_

_Hey, sorry I ran out last night, everything is changing and I can’t cope?_

None of those options seemed likely to help the situation.

Nina’s spiraling thoughts were interrupted by someone moving between her bench and the slanted pre-noon sun that had been casting odd shadows on the page of her book. She looked up to see Ruben, hands in his pockets and shoulders slightly hunched, regarding her with an expression of mild trepidation.

“Hey,” said Ruben. “Can I sit?”

“Sure.” Nina scooped the pile of books off the bench and put them on the ground to make room for him. 

Ruben sat and, without preamble, said, “I asked Usnavi and Vanessa if I could talk to you first. Before they talked to you, I mean.”

Nina, thinking of Ruben’s rapid retreat to the bedroom and of the insistent buzzing of her phone the night before, was surprised at this. She shut her book, ran her hands over the cover as though smoothing fabric, and tried to keep the worst of the puzzlement off her face. 

“Okay,” she said at last.

“Sorry,” Ruben said, appearing to notice, for the first time, the book on her lap and the rather overfull book bag under the bench. “I distracted you, didn’t I? You were working.”

“I was, technically,” said Nina. “But it’s okay. I wasn’t really getting a lot done.”

“Why not?” It was an unusually direct question and Nina found she had no immediate answer. She looked at the shredded skin around her nails and noticed that one of her hangnails was bleeding. 

“I’ve been sleeping a lot,” she said, which seemed by far the simplest way to say _Because I don’t think I can do this_. “I thought after I made it through a full year at Stanford I’d stop sleeping so much but I never really did.” 

Ruben tilted his head sideways and she was reminded so strongly of Usnavi that she almost laughed. 

“I get that,” he said eventually.

“You do?”

“I used to be a chemist,” he said, not making eye contact and instead drawing lines in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. “A really good one. My brain was the only thing about me I thought was worth anything, you know? I was pretty much useless otherwise. And then some shit happened, and I couldn’t use my brain anymore. It just — it didn’t work the same way. So I slept a lot.” He paused. “Or, I tried to sleep a lot.”

“Usnavi and Vanessa never mentioned that.”

“They don’t know. I’ve always been a teacher to them — I’m not Dr. Marcado who stopped being good at the only thing he was ever good at. It’s safe that way, sometimes.”

“Are you ever going to tell them?”

“I am.” Ruben kept his eyes on his hands, which were gripping the edge of the bench on either side of his thighs. “It’s just — it’s slow. Telling them that. Telling them about the shit that happened has already taken a lot of time.”

Nina had no idea what to say to this and she ran her fingers along the spine of her book for something to do, feeling the way the glue had cracked and created scars in the cheap paper. “How do you stay awake?” she asked finally.

“Nightmares,” Ruben said. He stayed silent for a long moment, then added, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” 

“At the bodega?” 

“No,” he said. “Somewhere else, if you don’t mind a quick train ride. There’s something I want to show you.”

She tried to keep the surprise out of her voice. “Yeah. Okay.”

Ruben looked taken aback, as though he’d expected to need to persuade her. “Really?”

“Yeah. I trust you.”

“You barely know me.”

“But Usnavi and Vanessa know you. And they clearly like you a lot.”

Ruben blinked at her for a moment while her words sunk in and then his lips twitched and his eyes crinkled while he fought back a smile. After a muttered thanks, he helped her re-pack her bag and walked her back to her house so she could drop her books off. They stayed mostly quiet the whole time, speaking only to tell one another to turn right or left, to keep going straight, to stop at the next house. Nina would have expected the silence to be uncomfortable but she found herself relaxing into the quiet, listening to the rumble of the city and the rhythm of Ruben’s footsteps beside her. 

They took the subway across the river to the community college where Ruben taught. The campus was nearly empty, the occasional teacher drifting in or out of a building with a bagged lunch or a stack of paper in their arms, a few students filtering outside after summer classes and squinting and panting into the heat. Ruben pulled a keycard out of his back pocket and tapped them into the science building.

Inside, Nina was met with a blast of cold air and the familiar sight of bulletin boards bursting with flyers and dotted with thumbtacks. There were pamphlets for four-year colleges, flyers for summer programs, advertisements for online enrichment courses, neon cardstock with the dates of placement exams for the fall, and at least one piece of paper requesting a roommate. Ruben rolled his eyes at this but didn’t take it down.

Nina, feeling an odd nostalgia that she hadn’t expected, followed Ruben down several different halls until he came to a door bearing a plaque that read _Dr. Ruben Marcado, Chemistry_. He unlocked the door.

Ruben had decorated the walls of the office that weren’t occupied by whiteboards with the obligatory periodic table of the elements and a handful of XKCD strips. Nina craned her neck to look at the framed photo on the desk and Ruben, clearly noticing, turned it around to reveal that it was a picture of him sandwiched between Usnavi and Vanessa at an unfamiliar kitchen table. From the angle of the photograph, it looked like it had been taken with a phone they’d propped against something to face them and Usnavi was pressing an enthusiastic kiss to Ruben’s cheek while Vanessa rested her chin on Ruben’s shoulder, sticking her tongue out at the camera. Both the Ruben in the picture and the Ruben in front of Nina were blushing.

Ruben leaned against the edge of his desk, ankles crossed, and gestured around with one hand. 

“This is where I work,” he said, unnecessarily. He shrugged, looking up at her through his eyelashes in a way that suggested he was worried she’d think him stupid for bringing her here.

“I like it,” she said, and discovered that she wasn’t lying. True, the office was tiny and illuminated by an odd, angular half-light that filtered in through a narrow window; the window itself looked directly onto the solid brick wall of the neighboring building. But Ruben’s desk was cluttered with legal pads and notebooks, most of which were open and filled with Ruben’s neat, even handwriting, and the bookshelves in the corner were overflowing. The room was quiet in the hushed, blanketed way of a library and it smelled like paper and dry erase marker and ink.

“Why’d you bring me here?” she asked, after she’d turned in a full circle to properly take in her surroundings.

“Because this is something that’s harder to share with Usnavi and Vanessa.”

“Being a teacher?”

“Kind of. I mean, they know I’m a teacher, and you only need an M.S. to teach chemistry at community college. And they listen to everything I tell them about work, and about science, and about my life before. I’m not saying they don’t listen to me, or they don’t understand me. They do.”

“But?”

“But you know this world. You know what it feels like to depend on your brain for everything that you are and fall asleep hoping it doesn’t fail you. And I wanted you to know — I guess I just wanted you to know you’re not alone in that. We have that in common.” 

Nina registered that Usnavi and Vanessa had probably told Ruben more about her than she’d realized, but that didn’t seem particularly important at the moment. 

“But what happens if it does fail you? What do you _do_?” she said.

Ruben was wearing a button-down shirt and he undid the bottom buttons, pulled the left side up to show a strip of his stomach. It was covered in odd, ropey scars that crossed over one another and snarled together, stood out pale and stark against the warmth of Ruben’s skin. They covered the left side of Ruben’s stomach and wound around his waist onto his back. Nina didn’t know where to look or when to look away.

“What….?”

“The bad shit,” said Ruben, whose hand was trembling slightly around the hem of his shirt. “Electrical cord.”

“Do you, um — want to talk about it?”

“No,” said Ruben. “I’m okay. I survived, I made it to the Heights, I found Usnavi and Vanessa.”

When Nina remained silent, he continued, “I lost a lot, back then. I lost everything, really. But it ended up okay. It wasn’t just — I wasn’t just my brain, or what I’d achieved, or whatever. And Usnavi, and Vanessa — they’re not going anywhere. They aren’t changing, not really. I’m not changing them or taking them away from you.” After a long pause, he added, “And you don’t have to choose. You can be Nina who goes to Stanford and Nina from the barrio at the same time.”

“I _do_ have to choose,” she said. Her throat was hurting and her eyes were burning and she realized, as though watching herself from a distance, that she was standing in a tiny, dusty office with a stranger and that her nerves were getting rawer with every second that passed. It felt as though someone were peeling back the layers of her and leaving her bones exposed to the air. 

“You don’t,” said Ruben. “You’ll always be Nina from the barrio, even when you’re changing the world. And you’ll always be Nina who made it to Stanford, even if it takes you a while to figure out what comes after that. And Usnavi, and Vanessa, and me — we’ll make room for you. Wherever you end up, and wherever we are.”

Ruben took a deep, shuddering breath and let his shirt fall back down to cover the exposed skin. His eyes were wide and he wasn’t blinking very much. 

“You okay?” Nina asked, around her aching throat. 

“Yeah,” said Ruben, continuing to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth. 

“You didn’t have to show me that if it was going to hurt you.”

“I know I didn’t.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I saw your face last night and I recognized it. I get feeling alone, and out of control, and like everything’s falling apart. I really, _really_ do.”

“I believe you,” she said, and burst into tears. She sat down hard on the smooth wooden chair in front of Ruben’s desk and felt like she was cracking along all the faultlines of herself. She remembered the way she’d felt when she dropped out, that first year, and the icy realization of failure — remembered sitting in front of the Dean and understanding in a deep, unnameable way that the she was surrounded by people who saw all the things she wasn’t before they saw anything that she was. 

Ruben reached behind him to grab a handful tissues and passed them to her, dragging his swivel chair out from behind his desk so he could sit closer. He rested a hand on her knee in a stilted, awkward way and the longer he left it there, the less uncomfortable it became, until the weight and warmth of it spread from her leg to her heart. Eventually, when her heaving breaths had turned into wet snuffles, he said, “What’s it like, at Stanford?”

“Everyone drives a Tesla,” she said. “My first roommate didn’t know how to do laundry and got annoyed when I spoke Spanish on the phone.”

“Yeah,” Ruben laughed. “That sounds about right.”

“Where’d you get your PhD?”

“The University of Pennsylvania,” he said, dropping his voice an octave in a mockery of importance. 

“Ah,” she said. “So same idea?”

“Same idea. Different coast, different people, but same idea.” 

She laughed. Her eyes felt swollen and it was incongruous to laugh when her lips were still salty and dry, but she had to admit that it felt good, laughing with Ruben. Usnavi and Vanessa got New York in a way she did not, in a way she never had — Usnavi could look at the same block he’d looked at his whole life and see something there that no one had ever noticed. And Vanessa — Vanessa had learned so early how to claw her way through the claustrophobic city until it accepted her, until it shifted and let her in. Nina had never figured out how to do that.

And, at the same time, Nina knew that she would never understand entirely the world she shared with her friends at Stanford either. She would never understand not knowing how much money was in the bank down to the cent, would never understand walking into a room and not waiting for someone to stand up, point a finger at her, remind her that she didn’t belong. 

But Ruben, she thought, knew the space in between. 

“You didn’t have to show me your scars to make me like you,” she said.

Ruben said nothing. He’d moved his hand from her knee and was now resting his elbows on his own knees, looking exhausted. 

“I would’ve liked you just because Usnavi and Vanessa like you,” Nina continued, stubborn in the face of his silence.

“I figured you would’ve, eventually,” Ruben said. “But that’s not what I wanted. I don’t want you to like me because they do. And, I dunno, I think I thought you made sense to me. Which seems kind of presumptuous, saying it out loud.”

“It’s not,” said Nina, almost interrupting him. “It’s not presumptuous.” She hoped it was enough to communicate all the other things that she was too drained to say out loud. 

Ruben glanced up and met her eyes, for a brief moment. He didn’t smile but he didn’t look away either. When he wanted it to be, his gaze was steady and even. 

“You still want that coffee?” he asked.

Nina nodded, managing a watery smile that nonetheless felt lighter and easier than happiness had felt in months. “You’re not dragging me all the way out here and not getting me the coffee I was promised.”

Ruben stood and slung his bag over his shoulder. Crossing the short distance between desk and door, he gestured into the hallway and flipped the light switch. “There’s a cafe down the street. It’s overpriced, but it’s good.”

“As good as Usnavi’s?”

Ruben shook his head. “Nothing is,” they said, at the same time.

***

Ruben and Nina returned as the sun was beginning to set. Ruben turned out to be one of the easiest people to talk to that Nina had ever met, and one coffee had turned into two coffees had turned into three. They were both thoroughly overcaffeinated and slightly jittery as they walked from the subway station to the bodega and Nina knew she was talking about twice as fast as was necessary.

Usnavi was sitting on the curb outside the store almost as though he’d been waiting for them. Vanessa was perched on the edge of the counter inside, a magazine in her lap, but she slid down and came outside when she saw them. 

Ruben stood back while Nina sat down next to Usnavi. Usnavi was looking at her with wide, worried eyes and for a moment she recognized a version of the expression he’d worn for days after his parents had died, a brutal, terrified expression that just said _Please stay_. She leaned over and kissed his forehead. 

“Walk?” she asked. “It’s beautiful tonight.”

Usnavi and Ruben both nodded and Vanessa grabbed Nina’s hand, dragging her to her feet and into a hug. Vanessa’s hugs were sinuous and reminded Nina irrepressibly of the kind of vine that tangled itself around whatever was nearest and then burst into bloom. Nina let her head rest in the crook of Vanessa’s neck while Vanessa’s long arms wrapped themselves tightly around her waist. They stood that way for several long breaths, Ruben and Usnavi silent somewhere behind them.

After Vanessa let Nina go, all four of them started walking in the same direction without agreeing which way to go. Usnavi was humming under his breath, head tipped back to watch the silhouettes of the buildings across the river turn from gold to navy to black in the fading light. “ _Sigue andando el camino por toda su vida…._ ” 

Nina, closing her eyes against the last blaze of the sun as it sank below the Jersey-side pillar of the GWB, waited for a lump to form in her throat. When no lump came, she mouthed along with Usnavi’s singing instead. “ _Y si pierdes mis huellas que dios te bendiga…._ ” 

“Oh man,” said Vanessa, lifting her hair off her neck with one hand and twirling it up into a bun, holding it there while the evening breeze blew against her bare skin. “That sends me right back.”

“ _El piraguero_!” said Usnavi, grinning back at her and taking her hand. “I miss him.”

“Where’d he end up going?” asked Nina.

“He and his wife moved to Trenton. Wanted to be with their kids,” answered Usnavi. “But summer’s always kinda weird without him.”

Ruben, who’d been more or less quiet, took Vanessa’s other hand. He gave Nina a tiny, private smile and said, “We could make some.”

“Make some….what?” asked Vanessa, adjusting her hand around Ruben’s so that their fingers were interwoven.

“Some piragua,” said Ruben.

“You know how to make piragua?” asked Usnavi, sounding impressed.

“Nope,” said Ruben. “But I will bet you all the money in my bank account that there’s a recipe online.”

Usnavi turned to Nina. “Do you get piragua at Stanford?”

Nina laughed and Usnavi said, “I’ll take that as a no, then.”

“Correct.” 

“Well, I’m up for it,” said Vanessa. “Now?”

“Tomorrow morning,” said Ruben. “First thing. I’ll get ingredients and we’ll all meet at my apartment.”

Vanessa groaned at this and Nina was reminded strongly of sixteen-year-old Vanessa, who’d usually dragged herself to school in an oversized hoodie and a denim miniskirt, glaring at anyone who spoke and wrapping her hands around an unreasonably large thermos. The few times Vanessa had been in class early had always been ominous, had always meant that Vanessa had escaped the house as soon as she’d been able to. Nina knew it had been because of her mother, even if Vanessa had never said as much.

“You’re making coffee, then, Usnavi?” asked Nina.

“I am now.”

“Important question,” said Nina. “Can you get on the roof of your apartment?”

Ruben grinned in earnest. “You can,” he said. 

***

When Nina arrived at Ruben’s apartment in the morning, the sky was still gray and Ruben came to the door with a differently shaped hickey on each side of his neck and the remnants of a self-satisfied grin on his face. His eyes had the slightly glazed quality of someone whose mind was at least partly elsewhere.

“Found it okay?” he asked, hair wild and sticking up at odd angles. She smirked and nodded as he held the door open for her. 

The collar of his t-shirt shifted and exposed a line of blurry bite marks just above his collarbone. He seemed to notice her eyes on them and he gestured vaguely at his hair and neck. “Sorry about — um. This.”

“Perfectly acceptable.” 

“I mean — the last time you saw me in an apartment it didn’t go well. I should’ve made a better impression, letting you into mine.” He was beginning to look slightly concerned, running a hand backwards through his hair and making it messier. He bit his lip and the lines between his eyebrows were suddenly very pronounced.

“It’s okay. We’re good.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Really. We’re good.” She made as if to touch Ruben’s shoulder before wondering if that was overstepping her bounds. Her hand hung awkwardly in the air between them for several mortifying seconds until Ruben reached out and gripped her forearm, looking into her eyes until she gripped his in return. The moment hovered there, fragile and raw, until Usnavi came padding out from the bedroom. His hair was too short to be obviously disheveled but he was walking bow-legged and looked thoroughly pleased with himself. 

“Vanessa fell back asleep,” he told Ruben and Nina.

“Did you try to wake her up?” asked Ruben.

Usnavi held up his wrist, which had a slightly damp ring of tooth-shaped indentations on it. “I did.”

Ruben shook his head and led Nina to the kitchen, where he’d assembled a pile of ingredients. 

“I’m not entirely sure how well this going to work,” he said, biting his lip again, “but I got everything the recipe said we needed.” He pointed at a piece of paper clearly printed from the internet, which said _piragua de crema_ at the top. Next to the paper stood various milks and creams and a bottle of vanilla. 

“You’re missing one thing,” Nina said.

Ruben looked at her in alarm, eyes very wide. “What?” he asked.

“Cinnamon,” she said. 

“Okay, okay,” said Usnavi. “I’m waking Vanessa up.”

***

Making the piragua was faster than they’d anticipated and the process was sped along greatly by the addition of Usnavi’s coffee, which he made with Ruben’s coffeemaker while Ruben discussed the ideal water temperature for optimal acidity and flavor. 

“I think everyone could probably make better coffee if they paid more attention to how hot their water is,” he was saying. “A good thermometer can do wonders, really.”

“Hey Ruben,” said Usnavi, pressing a cup of coffee into Vanessa’s hands. Vanessa was sitting on a barstool and hugging her knees to her chest with one arm, blinking blearily at them. 

“What?” asked Ruben, who was putting four cups of piragua onto a tray in preparation for taking them up to the roof. 

“I have never, not once, tested the temperature of my coffee water.”

“Well,” said Ruben. “You’re the exception.”

And he disappeared out the front door and into the hallway with the piragua before Usnavi could respond. This, Nina thought, was probably a good thing, as Usnavi was thoroughly flushed and looked mildly aroused. 

“Come on,” said Nina, picking up her own coffee and coaxing Vanessa off her stool. “Outside.”

They made their way into the hall, shutting the apartment door behind them, and followed Ruben up the stairs leading to the roof. 

Ruben had spread a thin cotton blanket onto the cement and they all sat down on it, shoulder to shoulder, Nina and Ruben in the middle and Vanessa and Usnavi on the ends. It was already slightly too warm, the kind of early heat that threatened much worse to come, but the height of the building meant that they were free from the heavy, sticky air that got trapped between the skyscrapers and stayed there, growing thicker with dirt as the summer went on. The wind that ruffled their hair felt cool and clean.

Savoring the feeling of the shaved ice on her tongue, Nina asked, finally, “So. What’s the deal. Are all three of you dating each other? Equally?”

Usnavi, who was sitting next to Ruben, pressed his nose against the skin behind Ruben’s ear and reached behind Nina’s back for Vanessa’s hand. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Before I came home?”

“I didn’t want to freak you out,” Usnavi said, eventually. “It’s a hard thing to talk about. And I know you’re not judgemental, and you’re open minded, and everything, but it’s always been me and Vanessa. And I was always straight before.”

“And because nobody knows, really,” Vanessa went on. “It was kind of our secret, I guess, for a while. The three of ours. We didn’t know how to tell anyone, or what to tell them.” She paused, and added, “We still don’t.”

Nina’s stomach dropped uncomfortably at this. She remembered sitting on the roof of Abuela Claudia’s building, on evenings when Abuela had managed to bribe the super, and telling Vanessa and Usnavi things she never told anyone else. They’d had secrets that were the three of theirs then, too, except now she wasn’t one of the three anymore.

Ruben, feeling Nina tense next to him, said, “They really wanted to tell you. It was driving Vanessa up the wall, you not knowing. It’s hard for both of them when you’re not here.”

“I mean,” Vanessa said, “I wasn’t going _up the wall_. I was cooler about it than that.”

“No, you weren’t,” said Ruben. Vanessa rolled her eyes at him.

“But now it’s your secret too,” Usnavi said. 

“The four of ours,” said Vanessa. She and Nina had both stretched their legs out in front of them and she rested her leg on top of Nina’s so that her calf was pressed to Nina’s shin. 

“And you don’t mind?” asked Usnavi, leaning forward to make eye contact with Nina around Ruben.

“Mind which part?”

“It being three of us. And me being not straight.”

Nina shook her head. “Usnavi. I would _never_ mind that. I just wish you’d told me.”

“Well, when I get my third boyfriend, you will know first thing. You may even know before these two. I haven’t decided.” Vanessa ran her fingers through the ends of Nina’s hair and smirked. Her voice was light but her eyes looked full.

“Ha ha,” said Usnavi, drily. 

“I’m not complaining,” said Ruben.

“Fair enough,” said Nina.

They all fell silent after that. The sun had mostly risen now, had stained the houses beneath them a pale, brilliant gold and turned the bottoms of the clouds lilac. They could hear the sounds of the neighborhood waking up, the metallic rasp of the storefront grates and the rise and fall of voices as people shouted greetings to one another. Somewhere beneath them, a clothesline that hung between two buildings caught the breeze and the clothes that were drying on it billowed and shrunk like ghosts.

“Top of the world,” said Usnavi. He’d finished his piragua and was leaning against Ruben’s side. Ruben had slid one arm around Usnavi’s waist and was propping himself up with the other. 

“Damn straight,” said Vanessa. She’d slid down to lie on her back and her head was resting on Nina’s thigh. Nina’s leg was falling asleep from the weight but it did not seem worth making Vanessa move. 

“It’s hard to tell that anything’s changed, from this high up,” said Nina. 

“Is that enough?” asked Ruben.

“Yeah,” said Nina. “It’s enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at [a-classic-fool](https://a-classic-fool.tumblr.com/) if you wanna come yell about In The Heights, Ruben, etc., with me. I also enjoy comments, but like, who doesn't.


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